


terrible love

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Introspection, John and Mary's Wedding, M/M, Music, POV Outsider, Sherlock's Waltz, Unrequited Love, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3689355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg doesn't know much about it; he's not very good with music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	terrible love

**Author's Note:**

> I was sad, [listened to this for too long](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVgiuIyINfA), and this happened. Have a continuation for this in my head, but 'si tu disais' takes precedence, and I still haven't got a proper laptop to write on, so it's a standalone for now. 
> 
> Title inspired by eponymous The National song.

Greg doesn’t know much about it; he’s not very good with music.

Most of his CD collection consists of some variety of the Stones, Blue Öyster Cult and the Ramones, and other 70s/80s proto rock and punk bands. When he’s had a whisky too much, he likes to put on his ancient brown leather jacket and hum along to Motörhead and the Melvins; when he comes home after a successful case, high on adrenaline, he turns up Iron Maiden and moves his head with it until the nape of his neck hurts. Back then, whenever his wife would return late from… practice… he’d drive in circles around London at night with Coldplay in the background. These days, Coldplay is a more frequent companion, sometimes followed by a couple instrumentals from the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s hard to acknowledge that he’s gotten older and sadder.

Greg has had his cultural climax when he grudgingly admitted to Sally over a pint or three one evening: yeah, all right, some stuff of The Phantom of the Opera wasn’t too bad. That, however, was how far he was willing to venture outside his realm.

He still stands behind that statement, roughly a year later. He’s not very good with music.

He doesn’t have to be, tonight.

Everyone is gathered in the circle inside which John and Mary stand, awaiting the beginning of Sherlock’s music. Greg feels that the pause is charged with an expectancy that resembles dread. As Sherlock steps up to the platform, Greg glances around, trying to see if it’s just him being this ridiculously nervous. Most guests appear relaxed, facing the platform to watch Sherlock take out a piece of paper from his breast pocket. Some are slightly tense, still wary of anything to do with the infamous Sherlock Holmes. Greg understands. Still, all eyes are on Sherlock. Everyone in the room seems to have silently agreed that the only sounds to be heard should be the crinkle the paper makes as Sherlock unfolds it and lets it rest carefully on the music stand, and the rustle of his clothes as he reaches for his violin.

Greg is the only one observing the other guests, the only one not staring intently at the platform. Everyone else is arrested by Sherlock, giving in to the focus Sherlock so absolutely demands by nothing other than his presence. John and Mary are no exceptions. They are both facing forward, eyes on John’s best man. Like an afterthought, Greg notices they are holding hands.

Sherlock takes his position; rests his violin against his chest; gives a small nod.

In between the seconds of Sherlock’s nod and the beginning of his playing, Greg takes a deep breath through his nose. The dread intensifies with the inhalation, and he squares his shoulders. He feels stupid—it’s just a bit of music Sherlock composed for the bride and the groom, for God’s sake. There’s no reason to expect anything… out of the ordinary. Anything strange. Anything… undesirable.

Sherlock reaches for his bow and sets it against the strings. Greg’s eyes flit over to Molly and Mrs Hudson, and then he knows he’s not the only one.

A few steps away, Molly holds herself stiffly. She stands at a slight distance to her fiancé, almost willfully solitary, with her arms wrapped around herself. Her chin is high and her back is straight, and she stares straight ahead, defiant, defensive. She looks as though she’s mentally preparing for battle.

Mrs Hudson is not rigid at all. Her pose is relaxed. Her hands clasped loosely together in front of her. Her face is a study of affection: a deep and sad affection. It sits in the parted downward bow of her mouth, is reflected in the wetness of her eyes. She looks the softest Greg has ever seen her: soft with devastation, soft like an open wound.

She looks so softly upon Sherlock as though Sherlock is something softer still.

Another moment before Greg lets out the deep breath he has been holding, Sherlock begins to play—

and with the first drags of the bow over the strings, Greg’s breath shudders out.

He closes his eyes.

In certain aspects Sherlock and Greg resemble one another; moderately imaginative, but never given to flights of fantasy. Rational: seeing what there is, investigating the could-have-beens to uncover the truth. Never bothering with the might-have-beens.

Given to bursts of anger, rarely to bursts of the gentler emotions. Hard: rarely falling prey to sentimentality.

As his eyes open again to the sight of Sherlock’s focus resting so absolutely and completely on John and Mary dancing their waltz, Greg feels himself and Sherlock become all of this.

Sherlock moves the bow to the fantasy he now, here, spins, in a hesitant start. Greg stares at him, rapt, losing himself in his blooming imagination: he hears the violin sing of John and Sherlock’s beginning, of their budding friendship that was never quite just friendship. There are notes repeated in different keys and lengths, varied in brief interludes. They echo something that to Greg sounds like questions, questions never spoken, perhaps asked silently in the refuge of one’s mind, and even there softly only, tentatively, in the hours between night and dawn.

Sherlock’s fingers protract the next note for one second, two, before allowing it to dip into something deeper. The melody stays the same, delicate still, but it goes more slowly. The notes are dragged out slightly, becoming longer tones, more intense, and Greg feels them resonate in his chest where they cause an ache he cannot understand. He thinks of Sherlock leaving, inexplicably.

The melody culminates in a crescendo that results in the loudest tones yet. Greg forgets to breathe for the seven seconds that it lasts, thinking he can feel the music’s sweetness on his tongue: it sounds sweet. It is something high and pure, like a celebration of something precious. Short lived, it is yet so intense it seduces the skin of Greg’s forearms into goose bumps, and when it shudders out with the next stroke of the bow back into something slow and mournful, Greg suddenly realises: this is all the might-have-beens from Sherlock to John.

Greg feels himself drown in the ocean of them. There are so many: it is the might-have-been of every glance exchanged; every laughter, giggling after a case, or loud while high on adrenaline; every quiet Sunday morning, the rain pattering against the windows; every argument and slammed door; every heavy breath on a chase, every calm breath sitting in front of the fireplace, reading; every intense, charged conversation; every every moment of silence in between.

This is the might-have been of  every month, every week, every day, every hour, every minute, and every second; and even though the might-have-been never had the chance to become the was, Greg feels sick knowing that it is also a thank you for all those very same months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds that John Watson allowed Sherlock Holmes to be with him, in whatever way.

This is Sherlock’s fingers telling the story of how John Watson mended Sherlock Holmes’s once broken heart, as much as it is the story of John Watson breaking the very same again.

There is a pause, then, that feels like a consideration. Greg catches the way Sherlock briefly closes his eyes, as though shielding himself against the sight of Mary and John together.

The music resumes as if never broken when Sherlock opens his eyes again. He keeps gazing at the dancing couple as he plays out the last moments of his waltz. It retains its slowness, but Greg feels there is an ache to the sweetness that was not there before. The last note is a fermata, dragged out long and low, and then Sherlock finishes.

Barely more than a minute. Greg does nothing but stand there and stare. Something sharp and intrusive wells up in his throat. It hurts.

Christ, and he’d been worried about the bloody _speech_.

Even if the speech had not been a love letter, if it had merely been from best friend to best friend, which everyone seems to assume it was—this was it. This, now, was a love letter: made from notes of a sheet paper that fingers upon a musical instrument turned into an exposure of the self, Sherlock shedding the mask and the coat of the genius sociopath with the cold blood irreversibly to all those who had eyes.

This was Sherlock, in an ode to John Watson, saying: _I love you, no matter what. I love you, no matter how. I’ll do anything for you._


End file.
